GRADUATING PAPER (2)
I. Introduction
I) A brief Introduction to the Author
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was born neat the small town of Dorchester in Dorset shire, southwest of England. His father was a stone-mason. His mother was a great reader.
Hardy did well at school. He became a proficient Latinist and read widely and deeply in English literature. But his family could not afford to send him to university. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a local architect. During his spare time, he studied widely: language, literature, history, philosophy and art, and even won two prizes for essays on architectural subjects.
Seven years later he finished his training and went to London. At this time he revealed in the cultural life of London, seeing Shakespeare, attending concerts and operas. Here he abandoned his devout faith in God based on the scientific advances of his contemporaries, including most prominently Darwin’s On the Origin of Species
Architecture was never Hardy’s desired profession. Soon he tried his hand at poetry; when that failed, he began to write novels. In 1871, his first novel Desperate Remedies was published and well received. However the real success came with Under the Green Tree (1872). The publication of Far from the Madding Crowd in 1874 finally enabled him to give up architecture for writing. In the following twenty-three years he produced over ten local-colored novels until 1896 when he was tired of all those hostile criticism against his last two novels. Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1896). From then on, Hardy abandoned novel-writing and returned to his first love-poetry on January 11.1928, this last important novelist and poet of the 19th century died. He was buried with impressive ceremonies in the Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Hardy’s life-work reflects clearly the country life of his day. His boyhood and youth in the country side and small town of Dorset shire provide the imaginative seedbed for his best work. His greatest achievements life in his portrayal of nature, of which he can show the power and immensity as well as the tiny, delicate detail; in his pictures of genuine dialogue of country folk; in his use of the dramatic, sometimes tragic, incidents of a closed society; in his feeling for the historical foundations of this society and dislike for the changes coming upon it; and in his sympathetic moral sensitivity. He is famous for his compassionate, often controversial portrayal of rural young women, victimized by the self-righteous rigidity of English social moralities; and his most famous portrayal of such a young woman was Tess.
II) Brief Summary of the Story
Tess of the D’Urbervilles was published at the beginning of the last decade of the 19th century which was a time of considerable intellectual and social ferment. Soon after its publication some critics had already recognized that “Mr. Hardy’s latest novel is his greatest. Amid his beloved Wessex valleys and uplands and among the unsophisticated folk in whose lives and labors we have learned from him to find unsuspected dignity and romance; he has founded a story, daring in its treatment of conventional ideas, pathetic in its sadness and its profoundly stirring tragic power…” (The Times) This thesis is trying to explore the elements lead to Tess’s tragedy.
Tess is a beautiful, innocent peasant girl. One day his father John Durbeyfield was told that he was the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly family of the D’Urbervilles. After the death of their horse, the poor family lost the only source of income. So the family forces Tess to claim kinship with the sham but rich d’Urbervilles. Alec, the young master of the d’Urbervilles, a dandy, seduces Tess and impregnates her. Tess returns home and later gives birth to a baby, who dies soon. Peoples’ opinion forces her to leave home to work on a dairy farm. There she meets Angel Clare, son of a clergyman. She tries to persuade both Angel and herself that she is not suitable to be his wife and she retreats from his affections until he declares his love for her. The two fall in love with each other. Before their wedding, Tess tries to tell Angel about her past with Alec d’Urberville, but fails. On their wedding night, Angel makes a confession about his past dissipation and is readily forgiven by Tess, but when Tess reveals her own past, Angel just wouldn’t forgive her and deserts her that very night. Helpless and hopeless, Tess has to wander from place to place, doing the hardest work and bearing the harshest insult. One day she meets Alec again, and then Alec attempts to dominate her by exerting financial superiority. When Tess's father’s death transfers the whole burden of the family on her, she is forced to go back to Alec. Before long, the repentant Angel returns from abroad. Tess, putting all the blames of her unhappiness on Alec who lies to her that Angel would not return. Tess kills Alec and flees with Angel. After a short happy life with Angel, Tess was arrested at dawn.
II. Elements Lead to Tess’s Tragedy
I) Analysis of the Social Environment
By the end of the 19th century, the Victorians had experienced fundamental changes. Tess of the D’Urbervilles is set in such an age “when the pastoral village life is on its way out and the encroaching feet of modern civilization have moved in. agriculture and dairy farms are being replaced, and the railway lies a solid menace on the fringe of the village—the backbone of rural life.”(Chang: 291)
At that time, capitalism prevailed in the whole England that made broad masses of peasant went bankrupt and then they had to live in poverty and grave situation. In Tess of the D’Urbervilles “there is an apparent nostalgic touch in Hardy’s description of the simple and beautiful though primitive rural life, which was gradually declining and disappearing as England was marching fast into an industrial country.”(Zhang ＆ Long: 63). Tess is just living in such an environment, and from her we can see clearly the hint of that special period. In Hardy’s opinion, Tess’s tragedy is first caused by the epoch.
Tess is a poor peasant’s eldest daughter. In one accident, their only poor horse is killed. The death of the horse destroys the family’s livelihood and finishes the family’s hauling business. In order to survival, Tess is forced to claim kinship which begins her tragedy.
In the novel, there are many descriptions of Tess working in the field. She is first working on a dairy farm. At the beginning, the living condition on the farm is quite acceptance. “She appeared to feel that she really had laid a new foundation for her future.”(Hardy:182) Tess is full of expectations. Then after Angel deserts her, she cannot return to farm again. Tess returns home, where her family remains impoverished and Tess have no place to stay. In order to earn a living on her own, Tess journeys to Flintcomb-Ash. There Tess works as a Swede-hacker; Flintcomb-Ash is really a barren and rough place. Her job is to “grub up the lower or earthy half of the root” (Hardy: 482) because “the upper half of each turnip had been eaten off by the live-stock.” (Hardy:482) Sometimes is rains, but they could not stop working, for if they did not work they would not be paid, so they works on. And because “it is so high a situation that the rain has no occasion to fall, but raced along horizontally upon the yelling wind, sticking into them like glass splinters, till they were wet through.”（Hardy:483） Sometimes when there is frosty even their thick leather gloves could not prevent the frozen masses they handled from biting their fingers.
From the above description, we can get a vivid picture of Tess, who is exhausted with manual labor, but still could hardly support he family. The self-supporting peasants were displaced and impoverished. Hardy successfully revealed “the tragic fate of the simple rural folk when confronting the intrusion and influence of the urban civilization that is degenerated… by the bourgeoisies.” (Hu: 362)
II) The Hypocritical Morality of the Bourgeois Society
“The rapid development of science and technology, new inventions and discoveries in geology, astronomy, biology and anthropology drastically shook people’s religious convictions.”(Zhang: 242). Tess of the D’Urbervilles holds up a mirror for the spirit of the time. When the modern civilization spread the countryside, it took broad masses of peasants into a bitter living condition, nature stops being benevolent and caring, and so does God. “Life becomes cold and indifferent, man’s ethical being dwindles, and humans are as powerless as are so many flies.” Tess of the D’Urbervilles came into conflict with Victorian morality. It explored the dark side of his family connections in Berkshire. In the story the poor village girl Tess Durbeyfield is seduced by the wealthy Alec, she becomes pregnant but the child dies in infancy. Tess finds work as a dairymaid on a farm and falls in love with Angel Clare, a clergyman’s son, who marries her. When Tess tells Angel about her past, he hypocritically deserts her. Tess becomes Alec’s mistress. Angel returns from Brazil, repenting his harshness, but finds her living with Alec. Tess kills Alec in desperation, she is arrested and hanged.
Hardy bravely challenged many of the sexual and religious conventions of the Victorian age. “Tess, the heroine, is depicted as a victim of the society. Being a beautiful, innocent, honest, and hard-working country girl, she is easily taken in and abused by the hypocritical bourgeoisie, constantly suppressed by the social conventions and moral values of the day, and eventually executed by the unfair legal system of the society (Zhang,Long:65)
The tragedy of Tess’s tragedy is the tragedy of one society, is the tragedy of the economy, politics and morality in bourgeois society. The hypocritical morality of the bourgeois society can be seen everywhere in the novel. Alec is a villain; he doesn’t think woman’s rights should be respected. He is thoroughly sensual, violent and headstrong, and determined on getting his own way at all costs. He treats Tess just as a tool to satisfy his desire for sex. After seducing Tess, he is never thinking of marrying her out of morality reason and be responsible for his conducts.
Angel mentally destroys Tess. Before Tess’s confession, Angels thinks Tess is perfect, and tries his best to gain Tess’s love. At the wedding night, Angel first confesses his fault. He admits that he had a short affair with a stranger in London. He doesn’t think that it is a serious matter. But after Tess’s confession, Angel’s attitude towards Tess changes thoroughly. His hypocritical morality reveals his real mask. He holds the view that only men can make mistakes, and one man can have several women, but as a woman, she should be pure, having no flaw, and before her wedding she should be a virgin, he doesn’t forgive Tess even though she is seduced by Alec, not willing to do so. He should not attribute another man’s fault to Tess. His thorough change of attitude exposes the hypocritical morality. Tess has done nothing wrong, but Alec blame her “ ‘I fear you at moments-far more than you need fear me at present; and to lessen my fear, put your hand upon that stone hand, and swear that you will never tempt me-by your charms or way.’”(Hardy: 528) It is Alec who seduced Tess but he attributes all the faults to Tess. Angel also blames Tess “O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the cast! You were one person: now you are another.”(Hardy: 387) They all attribute the faults to Tess, and they never think that a girl can not lose her virginity without a man. Man is a real thug.
III) Hardy’s Ideas Leads to Tess’s Tragedy
“Hardy read Darwin’s The Origin of Species and accepted the idea of “survival of the fittest.” He was also influenced by Spencer’s The First Principle, which led him to the belief that man’s fate is predetermined by tragic, driven by a combined force of ‘nature,’ both inside and outside.”(Zhang: 311) So Tess's fate is doomed to tragic. In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Hardy’s pessimistic ideas penetrate through Tess’s whole life. There are too many coincidences that lead to Tess’s tragedy. Below is a series of such coincidences.
＊ Tess’s father John is intelligible discovered by Parson Tringhan that he is the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly family of the D’Urbervilles.
＊ John is a heavy drinker, but this time he is too drunk to get up.
＊ Then is the sudden death of their only horse Prince.
＊ Having no other choice, Tess has to claim kinship and works at Alec D’Urbervilles.
＊ Several months later, Alec seizes a chance and seduces Tess, but before Tess always avoids Alec.
＊ Only on sex makes Tess pregnant.
＊ Tess’s baby dies in infancy
＊ Tess meets Angel, she refuses Angel several times, as a normal man, he must have already decided to give up Tess, but it is not applied to Angel. He still has affection for Tess.
＊ Before their wedding, Tess write Angel a letter and slips it under his doorway, but God knows, Angel doesn’t find the letter and until the day of their wedding that Tess discovers that the letter slid under the carpet.
＊ Tess visits Emminster to ask the Clares for assistance. While returning to Flintcomb-Ash, Tess happens to meet Alec.
＊ After the death of John Durbeyfield, the family loses their have and must find accommodations elsewhere.
＊ Angel doesn’t immediately receive Tess’s letter and goes back earlier to find her.
＊ Tess and Angel spend together a short happy days without being found, and finally one day when Angel wakes up he finds they are closed by the police.
“Hardy held that the universe is indifferent to the fate of humanity, even hostile to it, that human beings are ignorant and careless, and that they usually get themselves into worse predicaments than they would do if they exercised reasonable caution, and did not always blindly hope for the best.”(Zhang＆Long:66). So in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Hardy’s every plan puts Tess’s fate to a tragic ending and all of the plans cannot be altered. Sometimes his plans seem to up unintelligible. Hardy thought that Tess’s tragedy is arranged by fate. By the end of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Hardy wrote that “‘Justice’ was done, and the President of the Immortals had ended his sport with Tess.”(Hardy: 678) And in Tess of the D’Urbervilles Hardy often states his pessimistic ideas, there is a such paragraph “In the ill-judged execution of the well judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say ‘See!’ to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply ‘Here!’ to a body’s cy of ‘Where!’ till the hide and seek has become an irksome, out worn game.”(Hardy: 65)
Besides the above stated reasons, there are some other elements which lead to Tess’s tragedy. Alec and Angel are the main heroes in the Tess of the D’Urbervilles; they destroy Tess from two different aspects, the former from physical, and the later from mental. They belong to the element that directly leads to Tess’s tragedy. The following two chapters will talk about them in details.
III.Alec and Angel who directly lead to Tess’s tragedy
Both Alec and Angel violated and made fun of Tess. Tess’s physically was injured by Alec d’Urberville, and mentally was affected by Angel Clare. Alec and Angel by different way made Tess’s tragedy from bad to worse.
I) Analysis of Alec
a. General Introduction to Alec
The Stokes is a nouveau riche using the same of D’Urbervilles and Alec D’Urbervilles is the male heir. He can be said the villain of this novel, and he also calls himself “Satan.” From Hardy’s first description of him we could infer that Alec cannot be a kind man. Here is the description “ He had an almost swarthy complexion, with full lips, badly mounded, though red groomed black moustache with curled points, though his age could not be more than three or fore-and twenty. Despite the touched of barbarism in his contours, there was a singular force in the gentleman’s face and in his bold rolling eyes” (Hardy: 59)
He is thoroughly sensual, violent and headstrong, and determined on getting his own way at all costs. Tess’s resistance to the fulfillment of his desires is puny when compared to his cunning maneuvers and ultimately fails. Hardy uses vivid language, gives us an evil lifelike Alec. Every Alec’s appearance is the result of Hardy’s special arrangement. The text frequently portrays him surrounded by smoke from his cigar; at night, the cigar’s glowing tip is often the first sign of his presence. He is just like a ghost, suddenly appears around Tess. For example, the first time when Tess practices blowing, she suddenly becomes “aware of a movement among the ivy-boughs…Looking that way she beheld a form springing from the coping into the plot. It was Alec d’Urberville.”(Hardy: 94) The second time when Tess was at the window giving the birds lesson as usual, she thinks she heard a rustling behind the bed. “Turning round Tess had an impression that the toes of a pair of boots were visible below the fringe of the curtains.”(Hardy: 97) It is Alec no doubt. Then Tess often meets Alec at unexpected places. When Tess is in poverty, having no way to earn a living, he appears again. All of these descriptions give us an expression that Alec is just a ghost that always surrounds Tess. His feeding strawberries to the innocent Tess remind us of the serpent’s temptation of Eve. He is just an evil “Satan”. He tortures Tess from physical to mental, until he kills her.
b. Alec –a representative of industry
Alec d’Urberville is the representative of the new rising bourgeois. He is a product of the industrial age. He owns a luxurious mansion, lives a comfortable and easy life. He makes himself rich through money-lending and usury. Depending on his own power, wealth and status, he determined on getting his own way at all costs, regardless of what unhappiness he has brought to others. In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, he relies on his wealth and status, easily gets Tess and finally reduced her, however, he never thinks that Tess is a victim and never realizes Tess’s pains.
When Tess first meets Alec, Tess’s beauty is reflected from Alec’s eyes “It was a luxuriance of aspect, a fullness of growth, which made her appear more of a woman that she really was.”(Hardy: 63) He thinks women’s beautiful appearances are disadvantages for themselves, because their beauty can incur men’s disturbance. However, in modern times, pursuing beauty is every woman’s rights, every woman’s willing, and born beauty is not woman’s fault. Beauty is the gift given by parents; beauty can color the world, while at that time born beauty is a fault, and born a poor beauty is a big fault. From this, we can see that in Victorian time, how women were oppressed by men. Women have no rights, no status, no money, women at that time are miserable.
Alec, being a representative of industry, having power and wealth, never seek Tess out as a loving, equal partner. He reveals his feeling s of superiority initially on the ride in the Chase, when he exclaim, “what am I, to be repulsed so by a mere chit like you?” clearly he assumes a cultural right, by virtue of class and gender, to posses Tess’s body. Later, after he has proposed to Tess, he reveals his motive to be not love but a desire for power when he states: “I was your master once! I will be your master again.”
After his miraculous conversion, Alec accepts in its totality the patriarchal that women are somehow at fault, tainted, for being sexual beings. He calls Tess a temptress and a witch, forgetting how he all but coerced her into their sexual encounter. In his accusations against Tess, he echoes mainstream Christian rhetoric, displacing his desire onto her. However, he does seen to retain some benefit form his temporary adherence to Christianity. In his second appearance, while he retains sensual, self-seeking, and latently violent, he is also much more thoughtful and generous, apparently concerned for he welfare. He even criticizes her severely for swallowing Angel’s dicta while, without using her own powers of reasoning.
Though the sudden conversion is unconvincing as it does not tie in with anything we have seen of Alec previously, it does not matter too much since his real role in the story is to be the tempter of Tess, and the invader of Tess’s body. From Alec and Tess we can learn that at the end of the 19th century, women have almost no rights, they are under the oppression of the new rising bourgeois. The new rising bourgeois depending on their power and wealth, can do whatever they want without being afraid of being punished. Hardy here severely criticizes and exposes all sorts of social iniquities, finally he comes to question and attack the Victorian conventions and morals.
c. The Antithesis between Tess and Alec
“Tess incarnates the earth; Alec stands as its antagonist. The contact and conflict between the two signifies the tension of the age.”(Chang: 292). Tess is a pure, innocent, simple, and faithful country girl, “she is like a pagan goddess, a willow wand symbolic o
